44blues said:
First, you need to decide if you want to understand your fetish, or rid yourself of this "vampyric curse" before deciding on a shrink to give you his or her 'opinion" on foot tickling. But remember: there are people out there who rape, murder, and beat their wives. So, if your deepest, darkest desire is to grab a girl by the ankles and evoke laughter from her, then you are no more evil than a comedian trying to get the same response from an audience by telling jokes. In short, don't beat yourself up for wanting to have some harmless fun.
But he if wants help he needs to not allow others to rationalize the fetish to him, as well. If he were to listen to rationalized defenses when he wants real help then he'll be even more conflicted, no? Part of the problem in the first place for people seriously wanting or needing professional help and looking online to get people's opinions on whether they should or not is that there will undoubtedly be a bias response.
I mean, come on, this is a tickling website that also indulges other fetishes, like feet and bondage, etc. Naturally people are going to be defensive-supportive rather than the ideal neutral-supportive.
It's always been my opinion that if we truely want to help these people who want the help, then we need to not inject our own personal bias into it. Naturally a fetishist who seeks no help because he feels nothing is wrong with him is going to be defensive and write everything off and suggest others either do the same thing or not take their own concerns so seriously.
If enough people, hypothetically, were to tell him similar things, then he might forget all about it and repress it further or suffer from denial...and you'd be helping him do that and worsening the situation.
I think if we choose to help these individuals, knowing this is a fetish website, that we should do our best to be unbias, and not let the nature of this site or our own feelings factor into our response. If the point is that they want help, we need to at least bring their courage up enough that they see it as a viable option. To not do that is to be selfish either for fear of losing them to a "quack" or religion (which we have no right to stop it, especially out of resentment, if it would be for their betterment, which we cannot know if we don't help them try that direction), or because some project their ability to cope onto them and somehow expect it to work out because it works for them. That's an assumption that they're as strong as the responders are, or that they have the same life philosophies as those who have already figured it out for themselves.
I think someone wanting help is either already confused or really needs to vent to someone other than another fetishist. It feels like a confession I'd bet, and it frees them. We cannot do that for them, because it's a sort of cheat, but someone else can. And if they can, I'm all for that.
